VM 'Move to..." behavior between vApp

[peterdabr]

Greetings All,

I'm running into an issue that I don't know whether it is by design or simply a bug and I hope somebody has an answer to this or point me to the documention/articles that describes this rather unexpected behavior.

I'm on vCD 5.1, I have 2 vApps with the same  direct networks and when I try to move linux VM from one vApp to another using 'move to...' option, it does not retain the mac and nics of the VM once moved to the destination, instead it adds new nic numbers in the OS with new MAC addresses and sets IPs there.

I'm surprised to find out that the move is really not a move but rather a clonning of VM when looking at it from vCenter, as it creates new dest VM with the same name and upon completion it switches to it, discarding the previous one. That explains why the MAC change happens on all NIC..

I guess the thing that I don't understand is why in the world would it do that? Move should be  a move and no MAC changes resulting in new NIC interfaces popping up in OS should take place. It wreaks havoc inside OS and also prevents MAC addresses hardcoding inside ifcfg-eth scripts which is a common practice in Linux on vSphere to avoid possible issues with nic reordering and loss of network connectivity on boot.

Can somebody tell me if this is by design, a bug (if so, is there a patch for it) or maybe I'm doing something wrong.and all this can be avoided.

Will defintely award points for good answers.

P

[BhaskarSA]

Hi,

This seems to be the behavior with VCD 1.5 as well. You should file an SR.

-Bhaskar

[peterdabr]

Thanks Bhaskar.

I'd be nice to hear from VMware eng. whether this is an 'exptected' behavior or just a bug, rather than filling SR...

I guess I'll wait a little bit longer to see if anybody has any ideas before calling support.

PD

[jgover]

Hi,

Our clients have the same issue in a Windows environment. I do not understand the "MOVE" concept here.

It even clones when you try to "Fence" and still does not retain the IP or MAC as it states. It has to be a bug(s)

Information icon states: Retain IP/ MAC Resources: By default, when a vApp is  stopped, public IP and MAC addresses for the network are relinquished to

pool.  Select this option if you intend to retain IP and MAC addresses of the edge  gateway across deployments.

I may open a ticket soon.

Keep it posted.

Thanks

Jeff

[IamTHEvilONE]

I think that the term Move might not make the most sense.  I think Move, is more copy to destination (to have the original in the case of failure) and then Delete the original VM.  That copy process may not be an 'exact' copy, which is where the issue is.

Worst case scenario, we need to allow for Move to yeild an Exact Copy.

[peterdabr]

Jon,

Jon Hemming wrote:

Worst case scenario, we need to allow for Move to yeild an Exact Copy.

Please. I'm making this reply an official request to vCD team to rewrite 'Move' feature so that it would render an Exact Copy of the source VM. We have a lot of clients that have been complaing about this feature being useless and misleading. It changes MAC addresses causing new NIC interfaces to pop up in every OS we tried it, causing VMs to lose their network connectivity.

This feature is for the most part useless in its current form.

Thank you for your answer

Peter D.

[IamTHEvilONE]

Can you please create a VMware Support Request for this Feature Request, and then send me a PM with the Sr number?  The more unique SR numbers, the better.

[peterdabr]

Support request filed: 13308641604 with request to have it assigned to you.

Thanks,

PD